Evidence from Paleontology

Evidence
Describe the piece of evidence that you've found.
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The oldest evidence of organisms (eucaryotic cells) which are more complex than bacteria have been discovered in fossils sealed in rocks which are estimated to be 2 billion years old.
http://books.nap.edu/html/creationism/evidence.html
Liyan Tay
Pieces of fossil records gave a lot of information about the evolution of whales to paleontologists such as their ancestors are from the land and that whales were actually evolved from a land animal to a ocean animal.
http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/education/explorations/tours/stories/middle/C7.html

http://www.enchantedlearning.com/subjects/whales/classification/Whalefossils.shtml
HyunMuk Choi
There are fossils showing height, head/brain size, bone and spine length, etc changes in humans from numberous fossils that have been found.
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/homs/specimen.html
Akihiro Matsukawa
In places such as Australia there has been evidence found of a mammals found before palentologists thought that mammals existed. A rat like rodent fossil was found in the Crestaeous Era. This discovery left palentologists amazed and thirsting for more knowledge.
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=000BC5A8-4B81-1CE0-B4A8809EC588EEDF&ref=sciam
Ashleigh Geick


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Paleontologists have found peacock like feathers on the tail of a dinosaur fossil. This has caused a controversy that not all feathered creatures could be considered as birds. Scientists have always thought birds and dinosaurs branched off into their own paths since more than 250 million years ago. In the past paleontologists has compared dinosaurs and birds and made a list of about 150 similarities between them but feathers was not one of them. Now the scientists are still not sure of the classifications for each.
There are fossils that have shown the evolution of horses from about 55 million years ago. The common horse that we know today used to be the size of a small dog. The horse gradually grew over the years in size and form. Horses originated in North America even though they became extinct there about 10,000 years ago.
http://chem.tufts.edu/science/evolution/HorseEvolution.htm

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/03/0317_050317_horseevolution.html
Angela Berst
Fossils show that the transition from fish to amphibians was not from water to land, but took place in the water. The fish developed legs and feet to crawl around in the bottom of the water. Eventually, these amphibians moved to land and their pelvises became more firmly attached to their spines and their shoulders separated from their skulls. Lungs were always present.
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-transitional/part1a.html
Jisoo Lee
http://discovermagazine.com/1999/jan/feathersdontmake1571/?searchterm=Andrew%20Knoll
Cassandra
Lim
Paleontologists now a-days are using evidence called microfossils to determine life in the past, and
what types of organisms were alive then. Back in the 1700's, 1800's and early 1900's they were using macrofossils which
did not require special equipment to study. Microfossils have progressed Paleontology because they can be found in the
small cores in which samples are taken beneath the earth's surface. They are also abundant in sedimentary rocks, which
provides the most accurate information and preserved history than any other rock could.


http://geology.er.usgs.gov/paleo/groups.shtml


Simon Shieh


Homologous characters can be recognized in the fossil organisms. By this we can find out that among dinosaur fossils, some shares few traits in common with birds today and some even shares several.
http://www.zoology.ubc.ca/~bio336/Bio336/Lectures/Lecture5/Overheads.html
Kyuil Chun

A series of sedimentary layers from 500 million years ago (Ordovician period) contained trilobite foccils. Samples Samples were obtained from every three million years. The number of ribs of each species of trilobite changed over time (=evolution).
http://www.zoology.ubc.ca/~bio336/Bio336/Lectures/Lecture5/Overheads.html
HaeBin Kim


Fossil records show that shells evolved a larger, thicker shell, with a more pronounced ridge over the epocks of Miocene, Pilocene, and Pleistoncene. This is an evidence of evolution.
http://www.zoology.ubc.ca/~bio336/Bio336/Lectures/Lecture5/Overheads.html
HaeBin Kim
in 1799 an engineer named William Smith reported that, in undisrupted layers of rock, fossils occurred in a definite sequential order, with more modern-appearing ones closer to the top. Because bottom layers of rock logically were laid down earlier and thus are older than top layers, the sequence of fossils also could be given a chronology from oldest to youngest. Consequently, in the 1830s the paleontologist William Lonsdale, recognized that fossil remains of organisms from lower strata were more primitive than the ones above. Fossils found on the lower layer of rock earlier forms of evolution compared to fossils found on the top layer.
http://books.nap.edu/html/creationism/evidence.html
HaeBin Kim

In the 17th century, Nicholas Steno brought to attention the similarity between the current shark teeth and the rocks commonly known as "tongue stones". (=similarity between modern form of animal and ancient forms)
Two centuries later, Mary Ann Mantell picked up a tooth, which she thought was a tooth of a large iguana, but it turned out to be the tooth of a dinosaur, Iguanodon. This discovery sent the powerful message that many fossils represented forms of life that are no longer with us today.
http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evosite/lines/Ifossil_ev.shtml
HaeBin Kim


Early whale fossils had nostrils at the front of the skull.
A skull of the beluga whale of today has its nostrils placed at the top of its skull. Fossil records suggest that the position of the nostril has changed over time and thus we would expect to see intermediate forms.
(Pakicetus: 30mya: nostril at front of skull)
(Aetiocetus: 25mya: nostril at the middle of skull)
(Beluga Whale: today: nostril at the top of skull)
http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evosite/lines/IAtransitional.shtml
HaeBin Kim
sediments such as sand and silt, are formed by weathering of rocks due to abiotic facts such as wind, rain, ice, and sun. These sediments, when carried by water, landslides, or wind can accumulate over time and cover the remains of a animal or its trace. As the layers of rock accumulate, the weight causes the lower layers to harden into sedimentary rock, trapping the animal or its trace inside.
http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/education/explorations/tours/fossil/9to12/Page4.html
Paige Anderson
Sahelanthropus tchadensis was named in July 2002 from fossils discovered in Chad in Central Africa as the oldest known hominid or near-hominid species dated at between 6 and 7 million years old. This species is known for a number of fragmentary lower jaws and teeth. Moreover it's skull has a very small brain size about 350 cc. According to dating, this species comes from around the time when the hominids are thought to have diverged from chimpanzees. Therefore this evidence suggests that it is close to the common ancestor of humans and chimpanzees.
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/homs/species.html
Hyun Bin Lee



Evidence from fossils for the reptile-bird link came in 1861, with the discovery of the first nearly complete skeleton of Archaeopteryx lithographica in Upper Jurissic limestones about 150 million years old near Solenhofen, Germany.
http://www.agiweb.org/news/evolution.pdf
Venessa Tan
Lobed finned fish first appeared in the fossil record in the early Devonian time, about 377 mya. The bony supports of some lobe finned fishes are organized much like the bones in the forelmbs and hindlimbs of tetrapods: a single upper bone, two lower bones, and many little bones that are the precursors of wrist and ankle bones, hand and foot bones, and bones of the fingers and toes that are first known in the Late Devonian amphibian like animals from about 364 mya. These animals were the first tetrapods. In 1998 a lobe finned fish was described from Upper Devonian rocks from about 370 mya in central Pennsylvania.
http://www.agiweb.org/news/evolution.pdf
Venessa Tan